What is the first friendly fork? Zcash will start an alternative development model in July

The author found a nickname "Ycash Foundation" on Twitter today that it would split Zcash at a block height of 570,000 (approximately July 18, 2019). Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox also has frequent interactions with this account.

Wilcox said on May 24 that Ycash is Zcash's "friendly fork." From a literal point of view, this fork is not controversial, but it can also be recognized by the “original chain” team, which may be the first time.

So what exactly is a "friendly fork"? Wilcox has pointed out as early as 2017:

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“In the future, with the development of the Zcash community, we may need a variety of different technologies, each of which will be built on different branches of the original blockchain. This is likely to happen because different technologies are available to users. With different choices, some of Zcash's applications may benefit more from one technology, while others may benefit from different, incompatible designs."

“I hope that when that day comes, the Zcash community can… deploy different technologies that are well adapted to different needs, but continue to be tolerant and collaborative for the benefit of everyone.”

So what is the difference between Ycash and Zcash? The Ycash Foundation, which is responsible for the operation of this forked currency, published an introduction:

Important: Ycash is a project that is completely independent of the Electric Coin Company and the Zcash Foundation.

At a block height of 570000 (approximately July 18, 2019), we will introduce Ycash, the first "friendly fork" of the Zcash blockchain. Since Ycash is a fork of Zcash, all Zcash holders before the fork will receive the same amount of Ycash (to ensure that you get Ycash, you must hold your Zcash private key).

The project will be developed and managed by the non-profit organization Ycash Foundation.

Rebuild the goal and keep the promise

We launched Ycash to rebuild a goal – mining on commercial hardware – and this goal seems to have been abandoned in the Zcash blockchain.

We are launching Ycash to fulfill a promise – Zcash founder rewards will never exceed 2.1 million – we are worried that this commitment will come from now until the founder's reward expires in October 2020 The greater the pressure.

We believe that both commercial hardware and the maintenance of the founder's reward cap are the key to fair distribution. In turn, we believe that equitable distribution is essential to the ultimate realization of universal access.

Important improvements after going online

After going live, Ycash will deploy the following two improvements:

1. Ycash will reduce the founder's reward from 20% to 5%, which will fully retain the original 2.1 million limit of the founder's reward.

2. Ycash will donate the remaining founder awards to a newly formed non-profit organization, the Ycash Foundation.

In addition, Ycash will deploy a third improvement at the same time as or after the release of Ycash (hopefully not later than the Zcash Blossom upgrade at the end of October this year):

3. Ycash will modify its PoW algorithm to select algorithms that are more suitable for commercial hardware such as CPU or GPU. (The Equihash algorithm such as RandomX and ProgPOW is currently being evaluated.)

In addition, Ycash's address format is also different from Zcash to prevent accidental situations where Zcash is sent to the Ycash address.

1. The transparent address begins with "s1" instead of "t1".

2. Multi-sign addresses begin with "s3" instead of "t3".

3. The Shielded sprout address begins with “yc” instead of “zc”.

4. The Shield sapling address begins with "ys" instead of "zs".

In the future, Ycash plans to continue to take advantage of Zcash, and most of the improvements in Zcash deployment will be connected to Ycash, especially for zero-knowledge infrastructure changes. Only when there is a major disagreement with Zcash's direction of development, Ycash will maintain its own model. In addition, we hope that the Ycash Foundation will be able to fund the development of new features for Ycash, which will also be an alternative to Zcash.

Principle of establishment

In addition to continuing Zcash's strong commitment to privacy, we hereby sincerely promise:

1. Guarantee the upper limit of Ycash supply of 21 million.

2. Guarantee the “Ycash Founder Award” cap of 2.1 million and rename it “Ycash Development Fund” (YDF). (Note: Since the 1.4 million ZEC in the Zcash Founder Award has been submitted, the effective limit for YDF is 700,000 YEC.)

3. Actively develop technologies that can mine on general-purpose hardware such as CPUs or GPUs, including periodic changes to the PoW algorithm for this purpose. (It is important to note that we are working on general purpose commercial hardware, not specific types of commercial hardware such as GPUs.)

4. Maintain pure PoW mining at least until the second block reward is halved, before 75% of Ycash will be dug by the PoW algorithm. (The PoS mechanism will not be partially or completely switched before the second block reward is halved.)

5. Never distinguish between timelock coins, so the time lock of some coins will be different from other coins.

6. Maintain lower transaction costs through any necessary means, including increasing block capacity limits or completely eliminating such restrictions.

Some numbers

When Ycash goes live, Zcash's total circulation supply will be exactly 7 million ZEC, of ​​which 20% (1.4 million ZEC) has been assigned to the recipient of the Zcash founder award. Of the 2.1 million ZEC founder awards, 1.4 million ZECs have been transferred, which means that the Ycash Development Fund (YDF) will have a limit of 700,000 YEC, which is exactly one-third of the Zcash founder's total reward.

Since YDF's founder award percentage is 5%, Ycash miners will always receive 95% of the block rewards.

By the halving of the first block award in October 2020, YDF will receive 175,000 YECs. From the first halving in October 2020 to the next halving after about four years, YDF will receive 262,500 YECs. At the time of the second block reward halving, there are still 262,500 YECs that have not yet been handed over to YDF. We hope that YDF's funding for Ycash will also help Zcash.

After launch, the recipients of the Zcash founder awards, including the Zcash Foundation, will hold a large number of Ycash (in the case where these recipients still hold a large number of Zcash). We hope this will give Zcash's founders a vested interest in the future success of Ycash and Zcash.

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